


Bits and Pieces

by selwyn



Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 10:11:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17785454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selwyn/pseuds/selwyn
Summary: The collected snapshots of life after peace. A long series of glances into the relationship between Madara and Hashirama, and the world dragged down with them.(Pt 3. A word for each letter, and the woman who was Madara's mother.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> These are all from my tumblr, sennokami.tumblr.com, where I post most of my (usually) hashimada-centric content. I also take prompts, so feel free to drop by my inbox. And remember, comments keep me writing.

Madara learns to find the switch early. It’s one of the first things his father teaches him, the art of keeping the monster in the battlefield and the man at home.

He is five years old and dressed in hand-me-downs from an older brother who is no longer there. He has to roll up the sleeves so they don’t drag in the dirt and knees are patchy, but it’s enough; the clan doesn’t have money to spare for luxuries like new clothes for children.

“You have to learn the switch,” his father emphasizes in the dojo that all training was done in, “so you won’t hurt your brothers.”

That is the lure he always uses. For his brothers. For the clan.

“A shinobi who can’t do it,” he continued, “cannot fight.”

And a shinobi who can’t fight for the clan does not deserve one. The people who could not switch anymore were usually taken out to the forest and put out of their misery - like pulling weeds out to protect the garden.

The switch was how a man could smile for his sons one day and kill children the next. It was how wives kissed their fathers and brothers and then slaughtered men on the battlefield. It was learning how to kill and keep smiling.

Madara kill his first man when he’s seven years old. He’s a prisoner of the clan but not anyone he knows or ever saw before his father put a kunai in his hand. Killing him should be easier because of that.

Madara does it. Then he cries. He cries and cries, even as his father grabs his wrist and drags him away, and he’s still blubbering when he’s home. For his failure, his father whips him across the calves with a wooden switch and makes his brothers watch.

“Stop crying,” Tajima said, unsympathetic, his hand rising for a precise strike that would hurt but not disable. “Stop, or your brothers will copy you and I will punish them too.”

Izuna is the oldest - he holds Akira and Tatsuya’s hands in each of his own to keep them from running away. Their eyes are misty but Madara can see it, the way they’re all turning blotchy and wet as he shakes and cries with big, fat, pearly tears.

He digs his nails into his palms to center himself. Blood leaks down his palms but he eventually stop crying and his father doesn’t stop him from scrubbing his face with his sleeves. Blood leak down his calve but he doesn’t cry again and hi brothers follow suit, and that is enough. He has protected them.

He will have scars into his adulthood; long, thin stripes across the white skin of his calves, each one a little raised and bumpy to the touch; the scars of a childhood survived.

 

* * *

 

 

When Uchiha Madara became clan head, he began a certain tradition. A letter, sent to their enemies before every battle on the thin legs of an ash-grey dove, written in his harsh and scratchy script.

**_This will end in fire._ **

_(the Uchiha clan is old and fierce and they are all bloody-minded; they will dig in their heels and their every breath will be fire and blood)_

You don’t fight the Uchiha lightly. They aren’t fair weather enemies who clash one day and forget it the next. The people who make that mistake make it only once.

_(they will march through rain and they will walk through fire. they will write your name in the folds of their brains and remember your face in the redness of their hearts. every fist thrown and every swing of the sword will be_ _a prayer to the god of death for nothing but your destruction)_

It will end in blood. It will be brutal and feral and maybe you’ll win, but the blood on the ground won’t only be theirs. When you walk away, you’ll be crippled. You will win, but you will be broken.

_(kill a husband, and the wife will pick up his blade and run you through with it. kill a child, and the brother will remember when he burns you to ash and bone. the Uchiha don’t know weakness - only fire and fury)_

So come. Bring your swords and bring your armies. Bring your wrath and dare to fight the inferno. This can end only one way.

_(in flames.)_

 

* * *

 

 

The world is nothing but a battlefield thick with the sound of the fighting and the dying.

_(stand up)_

The sky above is red with the dying sun and a coal-black night is coming.

_(stand up!)_

The ground is grasping hot mud, damp with blood and sweat, soaked with fear, with tears, with anguish and fury and desperation.

_(STAND UP!)_

With one thudding beat of his red-raw heart, he is eight years old and this is his first battlefield. With one thudding beat of his still living heart, Uchiha Madara pushes the corpse of the man he killed off of his body.

He is afraid. It is getting dark and dark and dark, and he is so afraid. He throws up until his stomach hurts and tears prick his Sharingan eyes, but he is still alive and with a animal scream, Madara pulls his sword out of the man he killed.

_(he is alive. he may have fallen first but he is the one who stands up last)_

Victory is in his mouth and it tastes like mud and terror. He wants to turn around and run but instead he jumps into the fray.

_(one man becomes two. three. this is what it means to be alive)_

Madara will come back home. And when he is afraid and alone, asking himself -  _am I alive? did I win?_ \- it will come, the hot blood in his veins, the surging, soaring proof of life, the first dizzy gasp of air that is so sharp that it hurts and you can only cry.

 _I won_ , says the pain. It hurts and it is good, because death cannot hurt. The dead cannot feel. To hurt is to be human.  _And I will win again._

 

* * *

 

 

Life is like a book. You can divide it into chapters, and some are long while others are short, but once a chapter ends, you can never go back.

Madara divides his life into four parts. 

Before Izuna. After Izuna.  _(he will never call it his death, just as he will never let anyone say his brother’s name where he can hear them)_

Before Hashirama. After Hashirama.  _(if Izuna’s chapters had been like burning, then Hashirama’s chapters felt like drowning. sinking, falling into a dark pool that he couldn’t pull himself out of)_

Throughout these chapters, Madara has been different people.

Madara-who-was -

_(a brother. a protector. he had loved his clan and they had loved him for loving them. he would go to war for spilled Uchiha blood, but at home he was smiles and easy laughter, a young man whose love was pure fire)_

\- Madara-who-almost-was -

_(the fire shadow, that which protects the forest and the people who live between the trees within. he is the village, he is fierce love and giddy passion. he is the warm hearth of a full clan and the strength under which children may grow. he is what Madara wanted to be and also what he never will be)_

\- and Madara-who-is.

_(alone. the demon. he is the eye-thief and the warmonger, he is the one who must be left behind. the one whose name means spot (or stain, the black smear of shame) when before it had been for an old and ancient god. he grieves but he will not be grieved. he is everything that loss has made and nothing that Madara would choose to be)_

“I don’t want to kill you!” cries Hashirama in the end.

~~_“Neither do I,” says Madara-who-was, because Hashirama is everything that he wanted .  
_ ~~

~~_“You will never have to,” says Madara-who-almost-was, because Hashirama is everything he could have had._ ~~

“Then I’ll kill you,” says Madara-who-is, because Hashirama was everything he wanted to destroy.

 

* * *

 

 

> _They say he stole his brother’s eyes._

Uchiha Madara loved his brother more than anything. His love was a forest fire, a landslide, a wave that came and destroyed everything. It was absolute in its breadth and endless in its intensity. Izuna was the sun and the moon, and Madara would set the world on fire to see the flames in his laughing eyes.

When Izuna gave him his eyes, he nearly wept. And because he honored his brother, he didn’t refuse the gravity of his sacrifice. To the Uchiha, the eyes were the most precious part of their body - the blood-soaked proof of their ancestry, something vast and ancient and powerful, and that was the day Madara, proudest and tallest of his clan, was humbled. Izuna - sweet and vicious - would give up his birthright to let his brother see the sun rise again. How could he not love him?

Izuna died that night.

> _They say he left because he wasn’t made Hokage._

Madara knew he wasn’t a leader. He found no joy in sitting around and letting people bring him their problems. He had little patience for holding hands or guiding fools. He gritted his teeth through diplomacy and he favored hard, direct solutions to problems.

But when his clan needed him, he stepped up. It had been duty, nothing more.

When Hashirama told him he wanted Madara to be Hokage, he’d been flattered. But he’d already failed his brother and his clan, and he’d tried to refuse - but Hashirama had a way of spinning you around until you were suddenly agreeing with everything he said and that’s what he did; spin and spin until he said yes.

He shouldn’t have. There’d been but one vote to his name and eleven for Hashirama - a humiliation all on its own, worse still for the accusing eyes pointed his way, as if he’d somehow conspired to place his name in the running.

This village didn’t want him.

> _They say he was mad._

The Uchiha loved deeply, and they loved for eternity. And Madara did, oh, he did. And when everything lost its meaning, when he lost his brother and his clan and the village and his friend, where else was he supposed to turn? Where else could he  _go?_

He’d only wanted to make it all mean something.

 

* * *

 

 

Madara was a teenage hellion _._ For him, the gruesome, loathsome, and frankly  _weird_  space of years between fourteen to just-under-eighteen was a confusing, rattling, and bewildering time; he suddenly had all these… these  _emotions._  And they wouldn’t stop! Then his voice started cracking, his arms and legs seemed to keep growing all over the place, and, sometimes, he woke up after really, really uncomfortable dreams about that one time he and Hashirama went skinny-dipping.

But the biggest betrayal wasn’t the strange fluxes of his body. Oh no. Destiny wasn’t that kind. The weirdest moment was when he was fifteen and three months, dressed in newly-fitted armor, fighting the Senju again.

Pictured - the running timeline of Madara’s thoughts:

  * _great another battlefield_
  * _Izuna please don’t go too far - oh for fuck’s sake, I turned around once, how do you run away that fast, you absolute SHIT_
  * _shit fuck, that’s a Senju_
  * _oh that’s a lot of blood_
  * _time to fight, gotta fight fight fight_
  * _is this guy, like, Hashirama’s uncle?_
  * _holy crap did i hear Hashirama?_
  * _oh that’s him, that’s definitely him, okay look cool, look cool_
  * _hi Hashirama!!!_
  * _oh he’s not looking in my direction, that’s okay, just be cool, don’t fuck up_
  * _ew i think I got arterial spray in my mouth_
  * _wait_
  * _wait Hashirama’s looking_
  * _no, i have blood in my mouth, don’t look!_
  * _is my hair right? don’t look at me, oh man how do I impress him, god I wanna touch his face, he’s so hot,_
  * _i tripped, i tripped, did he see, oh god just kill me, he probably saw, i might as well fucking die right now, fuck me fuck me fuck me_



Pictured - the running timeline of Hashirama’s thoughts: 

  * _oh man Madara has blood all over him, he’s so cool_



What other option was there but to become an utter beast on the battlefield?

He was, in short, a _ **rage machine**._

_(god, puberty. the worst time. it’s amazing how many feelings the human body can produce and put out in the space of a single minute. honestly? cutting off heads is the best action therapy a furious, hormones-addled sixteen year old can ask for. feeling hopelessly lost about the direction of your life? go out there and fucking kick some ribcages till they’re concave. it works.)_

Angry at your dad? Kill people. Despairing at the system you are an inevitable part of? Kill people. Terrified of dying meaninglessly at any moment? Kill people. Feeling really,  _really_ weird about your best friend-slash-crush?  _Kill more people._

_(he learned his affinity for fire when he’s sixteen and a half. not the technical affinity, no. he knew that since he was six years old. more like - the absolute joy of setting shit on fire and scream-laughing over the smoldering corpses of your enemies)_

It’s not the greatest coping method, but Madara learned to make it work. He was outraged. He was furious. He wanted to stomp on bodies and he no longer gave a fuck as long as  _someone_  wasbleeding at the end of the day. So, yeah.  _Murder._

_(but somehow, killing the fuck out of someone doesn’t help him become any better at not turning into a stuttering, blushing, tripping mess because woah, is Hashirama growing up too? and, oh no, even worse, is he kind of into that? god. shit. shit. kill more people. fuck. it’s not working. Hashirama is so hot, fuck, fuck, what do I do, I really like him, does he like me, how do I impress him -)_

Basically, he’s pretty glad when he turned nineteen and all of this seemed to calm down a little. And hey - looking on the bright side - at least he never got acne. (Unlike Hashirama. But he was still cute somehow.)

 

* * *

 

 

He was twenty years old when Tajima asked him to kill Izuna.

_(not father, never father. not anymore. he didn’t deserve that title)_

“The Sharingan can be pushed beyond the three tomoe pattern.”

_(how he hated him. how he loved him. Tajima’s place in Madara’s heart was a bramble, dark and thorny, rotten with the corpse of a murdered childhood. his father’s tongue was soft and it was wicked; he knew how to make words hurt)_

“It requires a great sacrifice.”

_(a sacrifice. always another sacrifice. when would it ever end? the battlefield was a desert and their blood was its rain)_

“The clan needs it now more than ever.”

_(it always did)_

”…what do we need to do?”

_(Izuna. oh, Izuna. sometimes, Madara loved him so much that he was insane with it. Izuna. Izuna. Izuna)_

“You have to fight each other.”

_(relief? relief. that wasn’t so bad. they’d sparred plenty of times before, but then why -)_

“One of you must kill the other. That… will give you the Sharingan’s greatest form.”

_(- oh. oh. oh. of course. how could he be so foolish? pain, that was always the answer. pain and pain and pain, until they were all broken into sharp edges)_

“It will be the greatest sacrifice to ask,” Tajima said, and his eyes were red and black, and his cruel tongue continued to spill out Madara’s agony, “but you must. For the clan.”

_(Madara didn’t kill Izuna)_

“Madara!” One last cut from that tongue, one last destruction, then…

…quiet.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Madara connects the dots, child soldiers growing up too fast, Izuna's death, and a gentle morning for two.

Madara figures it out when he’s thirteen years old. It’s not hard to connect the dots when he doesn’t fall prey to whatever stupidity afflicts his male age-mates, though it does take a while for him to  _fully_  grasp it.

He begins to get his first inkling when he feels nothing for Otohime, the so-called prettiest Uchiha girl of the generation before them. Social osmosis, not personal observation, is what teaches him her apparent virtues: Otohime is very pretty (but that is just objectively true), she is very elegant (supposedly, though he doesn’t know why that is so arresting), and she is intelligent (but why he is supposed to be dazzled by that is beyond him).

But then he meets Kyoya and, suddenly, he  _gets_  it. He’d been twelve years old when a small squad of elite Uchiha went on a mission in the distant Land of Snow, and only now were they back. Older, wiser, stronger. Their return is cause for a minor celebration, one that Madara mainly spent his time gawking at Kyoya.

He is an older Uchiha (too young to be an uncle, too old to be a cousin - a big brother). Madara hears that he’s twenty-three years old, which seems impressively mature to him. Over a period of three months, Kyoya _devastates_  his thirteen year old sensibilities. He is brilliantly strong (so cool!), he is tall and good-looking (so handsome!), and he is completely unlike Otohime (thank god).

Looking at him inspires all sorts of feelings in Madara, some of which were giddy and soft, but are mostly flushed and desirous. He wants his attention but for some reason, he can’t stomach the thought of being  _noticed_  by him. It’s delicious torture, juggling his fierce attraction and his need to be unseen, and Madara makes it a game of sneaking looks, his heart pounding anxiously.

(His crush is a bright, short-lived thing. It dies once he actually builds up the nerve to look at him for longer than five seconds and decides that, hm, maybe Kyoya isn’t  _that_  good-looking from up close. Still, the dots are there and he connects them.)

It’s a year later that he meets Hashirama. He’s nothing like Kyoya; he’s the same height as Madara, but that’s where their similarities end. His hair is dumb. His clothes - especially his silly little scarf - are dumb. He makes weird jokes, he acts goofy, and he is, somehow, his best friend.

It takes four meetings before Madara’s hands start to sweat when thinking about him. Suddenly, he likes Hashirama’s strange hair, because it’s actually very nice and when the sun hits it, it turns a glossy smooth walnut-brown. He begins to find his manners endearing, not annoying, because he’s having fun with him and he likes that, being able to laugh like they were just kids. Hashirama is impressive too and isn’t that cool, to find a boy his age who’s fun  _and_  good enough to keep up with him?

It’s just… Madara really likes him. He really does.

(But all good things come to an end and for him, it’s when his father takes him aside and says:  _That boy you’re meeting is a Senju._ )

 

* * *

 

 

Madara is ten years old when his mother dies. Thank to the clan, he and his brothers never go hungry or sleep cold, but Madara, even as a child, has always been too proud to rely on others.

Madara, ten years old and three months fresh from his mother’s death, unofficially appoints himself the man of the house. Tajima isn’t present enough anyway – became even more absent after their mother died – so no one stops him. Six months later, Madara is the one who chases his brothers down now. At dinnertime, he makes Kuro clean his plate and when they’re bathing, he holds them each down to clean behind their ears. When night comes and brings its terrors, Madara sits up and rocks his littlest brother, Izuna, to sleep.

It ages him. He’s a child who has to be the adult for other children.

_(maybe that’s why he loved Hashirama so much. with him, he was no one and nothing but himself)_

A year later, Kuro dies. Kunai to the throat – he’s dead before he even hit the ground.

They build his pyre together, and Tajima is around for once. Watching his body burn, Tajima asks Madara why he didn’t protect his brother.

He knows there’s something wrong with this question. But he is only eleven years old and he is grieving, so he doesn’t understand what. He accepts the blame for what it is.

This is his fault for being too weak.

Life goes on. Madara becomes stronger. Faster. He learns how to kill men twice his height and watches his two living brothers like a hawk. They have to live. He is the man of the house.

Twelve years old. Thirteen years old. They call Madara a prodigy, but his skills are beyond the battlefield. When there are holes in their clothes, he patches them up by candlelight, pricking his fingers on needles. Tajima isn’t here – he’s away, fighting. Chopping wood for the fire everyday makes his shoulders widen, and his hands have new, different callouses from doing laundry. 

Two years later, three days after his birthday, Togakushi dies from a crushed ribcage. _It was one of his ribs,_  the iryo-nin says after coming too late.  _It pierced his lung._

All Madara remembers is that he watched his brother die unable to breath, begging for help that won’t come. Madara holds Izuna when it’s his turn to mourn, his face dry while his shoulder is soaked with tears.

Tajima says nothing when they burn Togakushi's body, but Madara can feel his heavy eyes.

His fault again. Too weak.

He has one brother now, the baby of them all. He has to protect him. Has to, has to,  _has to._

 

* * *

 

 

Uchiha Izuna died late at night, in the hour of the dog.

When it was time to light Izuna’s funeral pyre, ten Uchiha shinobi lined up shoulder-to-shoulder to light it up. Madara stood in the middle and his flames were so strong that the nine others had to step back, sweating, shielding their eyes. Madara stood there, watching the fire, staring as his little brother’s corpse began to burn -

\- and he tried to walk in.

It was only Ai’s quick thinking that pulled him away from it. “Madara!” He grabbed his elbow and hauled him back.

Madara didn’t fight him. Even when more of his clansmen grabbed his arms to stop him from walking into the flames, he stared into the blaze blankly. His expression was so empty that it seemed impossible to believe he’d just tried to join his brother in the afterlife.

Izuna continued to burn.

Some Uchiha tried to pull Madara away but he was a dead weight, heavier than a millstone, and he refused to move an inch further. It was like the light had gone out of him, as if Izuna’s death had scooped out the part of him that was human and left behind nothing.

Three Uchiha – Ai, Hikaku, and Hotaru – stayed behind to watch him. There was no second attempt, but he also didn’t move an inch. He stayed as Izuna’s corpse grew black and cracked, and watched his last brother disintegrate before his eyes. 

It wasn’t healthy, this kind of mourning, but no one dared pull him away. Izuna’s passing had done something to the strongest among them, left him raw and feral in ways that screamed danger. No one thought he would earnestly attack his own clan – but no one wanted to risk it anyway.

“He didn’t cry,” Hotaru said later, when the morning sun slid over the horizon and the flames of the pyre began to die. “Not even a little.”

Htotaru had cried. He hadn’t even known Izuna that well, but he didn’t need to – everyone in the clan knew Izuna, the smiling knife who was never far from their leader. He had wept because Izuna had only been twenty-four years old and because every Uchiha loved him, this sweet-faced murderer.

“Do you think he wasn’t sad?” Ai asked, incredulous. “Izuna was his  _brother -_ -”

“No!” Hotaru cut in. “I just… it’s strange, is all. He didn’t cry. He tried to kill himself and he didn’t even cry. That’s not… that’s not right.”

Ai frowned, but said nothing else. Privately, he agreed. What kind of man could do  _that_ , but not shed a single tear?

After that, Madara changed. 

It was gradual, a glacial evolution from one kind of grief to another, slow enough no one could pinpoint the exact moment when it happened. His smiles became rare and when he did grin, it was always brittle and a little wild, like a wolf baring its fangs. And, while he had always been strong, there was a new savagery to his attacks – his eyes distant like he was fighting something none of them could see.

It was frightening, this new, injured Madara; a spirit of bloody wrath who flinched if he heard the name  _Izuna._

* * *

_(”…anija.”_

_“Yes?”  
_

_They knelt together, peeling bark for Kuro’s funeral pyre. It was birch, his favorite tree, and the white logs glowed like bones._

_“Promise me that if I die, you won’t cry.”  
_

_Madara’s hands slowed, then stopped. He didn’t look up from the long curl of bark in his hand and his hair hid his face. “You won’t die.”_

_“But -”  
_

_“You won’t die!” Madara didn’t yell, but his voice was hard and unrelenting. His hand became a fist and smoke curled between his fingers.  
_

_Izuna stared at him. His cheeks still felt tight from his tears. He’d seen Madara cry too, in long, heaving gasps that made him shake all over like he would shatter if someone touched him. It’d hurt to watch. His brother was a pillar, a titan – to make him cry felt like a crime._

_He pursed his mouth. “…alright,” he finally said._

_Madara didn’t reply but his peeling grew rougher, until his hands were dotted with splinters. He bled but asked for no help._

_They burned Kuro that night, so that his spirit could ride the sparks into the sky. Izuna watched him burn, wondering when it would be him.)_

 

* * *

 

 

It was with an unwilling heart and a resigned mind that Hashirama reluctantly trudged out of his warm bed towards the Hokage building. It was going to be another grind of a day, he was sure of it, just spent poring over all the mindless details that he hadn’t imagined when he pictured building a village.

To Hashirama’s surprise, Madara was at the office already. It was barely past sunrise, the sky still shot with dashes of cherry pink and gold, and he was blinking sleep from his eyes when the hair on the back of his neck stood up. It was an old, battle-born instinct, the unerring sixth sense of his that was tailored specifically to find Madara no matter where he was.

His trail curled through the dim hallways of the Hokage building. If Madara wasn’t trying to actively suppress his presence, then his chakra rolled off of him wherever he went. It wasn’t deliberate, Hashirama knew, because his was the same way. They both filled the spaces they went in with themselves.

He followed the smoke-trail up and up until he was on the terrace. He liked to fill the place with green things, trees and crawling ivy, until it was nearly a garden of its own. Madara sat in a distant, discreet corner of the terrace; if it weren’t for the bonfire warmth of his signature, then he could’ve easily been missed behind the spray of hyacinths.

Hashirama walked up to him, already knowing that Madara knew he was there. It was how they always were: eternally knowing each other’s place on the compass point. Once, it’d been a skill necessary for survival. Now, Hashirama enjoyed it as a reassurance. No matter what tempests life had for him, Madara would always be present in his mind’s eye as a hot cloud of smoky flame, unable to be missed and never to be ignored.

“Hey.”

Madara said nothing. He was smoking. Seated on a stool, hunched forward, Madara’s gaze was unfocused as he stared forward into a pale pink finger of a cloud. Hashirama said nothing else, because nothing needed to be said, and he didn’t want to disturb him anyway. Smoking was a peaceful ritual of his, the one moment that Madara’s attention was diffused instead of spearing forward.

He watched him instead. The pipe that Madara had was unadorned, a plain thing of seamless wood that Hashirama had given to him as a gift after they made peace, along with a heavy pouch of Tea Country tobacco (Madara’s gift had been one of his own birds: a lovely young falcon he’d trained personally. Hashirama still swore there was genuine intelligence in her eyes.)

Hashirama could have grown the pipe in its shape easily, but he’d gone to the extra trouble of carving it by hand, smoothing down the ash wood until it glowed. There was even a little Uchiha fan on the bottom of the pipe, something that Hashirama knew Madara liked to rub his index finger over when he was in deep thought.

Like everything else that Madara owned, the pipe was in pristine condition. It’d been worn shiny by his constant fingers and there were little teeth marks near the tail, but the inside was always lovingly scraped clean and when it was not in use, the pipe rode around on his person inside a little pocket hooked to his belt. Hashirama couldn’t remember a single moment when Madara went without it, it was so ingrained into his habits.

He watched Madara cradle the pipe and wrap his lips around the end, inhaling. It lingered near his mouth even when he was done, the tip absently pressing a small dimple into the corner of his lips.

Sometimes, when Hashirama was feeling particularly crazy about this, he really, really wished he was that pipe. To be touched constantly in that soft, idle way but to still have teeth marks where it mattered, then to be cradled everywhere Madara went. Or, perhaps even more than that, to be an intrinsic part of Madara’s quiet, unthinking rituals of pacifying his wildfire heart.

He didn’t realize how much time passed until Madara was suddenly looking at him. The spread out everywhere-and-nowhere quality of his gaze was gone, replaced by the needlepoint stare of a hunting bird. Tobirama had once muttered that it was unnerving, the way Madara could focus himself down to one thing. Hashirama still didn’t understand why. Or, well, he  _got_  why in the dusty, rational way one understood black and white facts that some people didn’t like to be pinned in place like that – but he didn’t  _understand_  it. Madara’s whole attention was thrilling to have, a quality in that absoluteness that licked past the skin and dove into the soul. Like he was saying  _yes, I see you, all of you._

“Did you need something?” Madara asked.

Hashirama privately mourned the death of the moment, but this was fine. Being the center of Madara’s complete attention was its own kind of pleasure. “Can’t I enjoy the sunrise with my friend?”

“The sunrise is already over,” Madara pointed out.

“It’s still a nice view.”

“Hm.” Madara said nothing else, which meant he agreed. Hashirama prided himself on his fluency in his friend’s personal language – it was a tongue that almost no one else in the world spoke.

They stayed together like that a little more – all the minutes going uncounted, watching the sky brighten further until it was crisp enough to bite and impossibly blue. Little plumes of smoke began to pipe out of homes as more people woke up and began their morning rituals, and little by little, Konohagakure woke up to another day of coexistence. A whole year had passed since they made peace and they were still together, this village stitched out of little hopes.

Hashirama reached out and put his hand on Madara’s warm, solid shoulder. A solid beat passed, then Madara put his hand on his. They continued to say nothing, content to be fat on a new, softer kind of silence.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A word for each letter, and the woman who was Madara's mother.

**S** illy  
That is the first word that comes to mind, when he turns around and sees that boy standing behind him. He looks to be the same age as Madara, but he was dresse in all soft greens and dyed cotton, looking as rich and full as a merchant’s child. 

Madara can’t be blamed for not realizing he was a shinobi until Hashirama walks on water – he’s never met someone like him before, a shinobi child who can do everything he can but still retain his soft, curving lines. Maybe that’s why Madara asks him to stay. Curiosity, from one child to another, for something previously unknown.

 **E** ndearing  
Hashirama is easy to love, even as a boy. His jokes are always kind and he never goes too far when he teases. He’s quick to apologize and quicker to offer a helping hand. And yet, he’s not a push over either. He’s talented and he’s smart, and Madara quickly learns to like him, all of him, for these things. 

It’s not that he’s unused to kindness, but he unaccustomed to it from strangers. Yet Hashirama shares everything he has and Madara shares back, and they both mutually agree to keep their secret to preserve this friendship.

 **N** ew  
He has a new friend now. And sure, Hashirama is occasionally very easy to mock and sometimes he’s unjustifiably stupid, but Madara will forgive him that. He will forgive him everything, because standing next to Hashirama makes him sweat nervously now, and he wants to try things that friends don’t do together. 

It’s not the first time he’s felt this way, but it is definitely the first time his feelings lasted for more than three months. It’s the first time they got stronger after seeing his crush be an idiot. It’s new, it’s sort of scary because now he’s beginning to suspect things about Hashirama, and it’s a terrible idea, but Madara can’t keep away.

 **J** oy  
Hashirama… Hashirama makes him happy. He makes him smile and he makes him laugh so hard that he can’t breathe. Just the thought of him makes Madara feel like he’s on the verge of sprouting wings and flying into the clouds. It’s addicting. It’s inspiring. Madara didn’t know that the human heart could contain so much joy for the memory of one person. His emotions are over-sized for him – sometimes he can’t help but grin at night, curled up in his futon and thinking about his secret friend. 

Sometimes, he wonders if Hashirama does the same thing too.

 **U** nity  
They are dreaming, and they are dreaming together. Madara never knew that someone could feel the same as he did, but Hashirama does and it’s like a dream, that they sit together and talk about the way they want to the change the world. There is no laughter here. There is no mockery. They sit under the gilded boughs of evergreens and they exchange dreams with completely solemnity. These are delicate, glass-spun dreams, fragile outside the protection of silence, and they are breathtakingly beautiful. Madara will always love Hashirama for dreaming.

 **H** ope(less)  
“That boy is a Senju. He’s our enemy.”

One sentence broke the spine of Madara’s hopes. For an hour straight, he listened to his father berate him, and then he ran away into his tent and he cried into his pillow until he ran out of tears to give. He made a mistake, he realizes, because he has been reckless. He ran headlong into what he wanted without thinking about the consequences, and now Hashirama is going to pay for it.

He can’t let that happen. Even if he has to leave his friend behind, he can’t do it completely. Father tells him they will set a trap. Madara waits until he sleeps, and in the cover of night, he carves a word into his rock.

 **A** nger  
This world is unfair. All things are inherently unjust: nature is a machine without morality and humans are animals in the dark. Madara will pay for existence with his flesh and blood, and he will cut himself apart to feed the needs of his clan. He will become stronger even if he has to burn himself to the quick to do it; he will rip out the light from his eyes so his family can see a little longer than he. So he will pick up his sword and he will fight Hashirama with his anger, and there are no rooms for dreams anymore, children, it’s time to grow up now.

Madara is a prodigy, they say. Madara will lead us to victory. Give us more, Madara. Give us everything.

Never stop or you will fail.

 **S** orrow  
There is only so much anger one can carry in one’s heart before there is no more room. And when that time comes, it will all flood over as deep blue sorrow and then you can only weep it out.

Madara cries sometimes. Not where anyone can see, not in a way anyone can hear; he cries quietly and unmovingly, breathing in and out and staring at the ground. He cries because he has had to build six different pyres for his kinsmen, and because he is a genius and geniuses don’t need to be comforted. He cries because he misses his best friend and the last time he saw him, it was on a battlefield.

 **H** atred  
The Uchiha and the Senju warred for generations. But hatred does not feed hungry mouths, nor does it make clothing to wear. Hatred was a devouring creature whose appetite was limitless, and the Uchiha didn’t even have enough to feed themselves.

Enough of it. Enough of war, and enough of hatred. Madara grabs Hashirama’s hand before he kills himself because he still loves him, despite everything, and he would rather follow his brother into the grave than see another precious person of his dead on the ground.

 _Enough,_ he says with only his touch.  _Enough of this._

 **I** nequality  
People say that Madara hates Hashirama for being stronger than him. They could never be more wrong.

Madara has never begrudged strength in his life, especially not Hashirama’s. No, truth be told… he adores him for it. He enjoys the thrill of fighting him, he is  _proud_  to say that Hashirama is the only man who can defeat him. He is unashamed of this fact. There is nothing greater than a good fight with Hashirama, in his world. It makes life worth living. It makes his problems seem smaller. He will set aside his personal goals and plans to make time for a tussle with him, because Madara loves the entire process. It’s the one, endless dance he will always crave, and it’s one of the many reasons for why Madara respects Hashirama so much.

 **R** ival  
If Madara ever had the misfortunate of existing in a world without Hashirama, then he would have never reached his full potential. He would have inevitably plateaued somewhere as a talented warrior who nonetheless fit the mold of all his peers.

It’s only with Hashirama to race against that Madara can flourish. Their youth was a perpetual race between them, always trying to get an edge over another, always striving to be just a little faster, a little stronger, a little  _better_  than their rival. In many ways, their rivalry could even be called another expression of their abiding profound bond, because they were always pushing to be the best for one another.

 **A** dmire  
Madara admires Hashirama in a lot of ways. For his ideals, for his dreams, his strength, his body, the list goes on… but he also admires him for his kindness.

Unlike many who would wrongfully think of kindness as a weakness, Madara admires and respects the immense depth of how forgiving Hashirama is. This ability to move on from loss and the seeds of hatred, in his eyes, is an example of an incredible strength of character. 

Hashirama is untouched by the cycle of violence – he will never fall prey to the inherent weakness of humanity, in which the selfish desire for love evolves into hatred. While Madara will criticize his ideology for being unrealistic, he will never, ever believe that so much love can be a bad thing. They both want peace.

 **M** ine  
Madara is a fiercely possessive person. He just can’t share – ever. He loves so much and he loves so hard, and he craves to have that all reflected back on him. And most of all, he wants to have Hashirama. The tragedy of being ripped away from him deeply touched his heart – the constant conflict in him between his duty and his desires keeps Madara up at night. 

But it says something about how fiercely he loves Hashirama that even the full weight of his love for his brother and his clan can’t force him to let go. When they’re together, they world falls away. Everything revolves around them. He wants to have him, entirely and totally, to own him, possess him, to devour him, until they’re one being.

(In a way, you could say he accomplished that.)

 **A** lways  
Their bond is more than just emotion. Their bond is built on mutual respect, recognition of each other’s strength, protection of each other’s humanity, and sharing an impossible dream. Around others, they walk as giants. Together though, they are simply two men who can’t help but hold hands on one side and strike each other with the other side. 

Even at the end of the world, Madara can’t help but talk about Hashirama – how great he was, how good he was, how much better than everyone else he was – even when history remembers him to be the hateful, envious shadow. At the end of his life, Hashirama is the one to kneel over his dying body.

Over the course of a hundred years, three deaths, and becoming a god, Madara has never lost sight of Hashirama. He has always loved him and he always will, because there is no universe in existence in which Uchiha Madara does not love Senju Hashirama.

 

* * *

 

 

Madara’s mother is named Akane and she is ten years older than his father. She picked him, not the other way around, because that was the nature of Uchiha women.

By the time she is forty, she’s birthed five sons, each of them dark-haired and pale as the moon. She names her firstborn Kou, because he is strong and solid. Her second son three years later is, in comparison, underwhelming. He is smaller than his older brother, thinner, and wispy around the edges. For a second, she considers leaving him in the woods to die, because a child this weak can’t awaken the Sharingan. There is a patch of red in his little palm - a blood clot, an omen at odds with his apparent frailty.

He changes her mind when he opens his mouth and  _wails_. It’s loud enough to make her ears ring. It’s enough to make her guards boil into the room, searching for enemies, and Akane can’t help but laugh through her exhaustion, because clearly her disappointment is misplaced if her son can be angry with her this soon. She names him Madara anyway, because he’s small and she can do that as his mother.

_(She smears ash against his forehead personally. Ash, so that he may take in the strength of the fire, so that Amaterasu recognizes him as one of her own._ _If Kou is Tajima’s son, then Madara is hers. His hair grows in coarse and thick, like hers, and he overcomes his early frailty with vigor, as if being weak offended him.)_

Kuro, Tokagushi, and Izuna burst into the world soon after, and it’s Izuna’s birth that is the most exciting. The Yamamoto launch a surprise attack right into their camp and she would fight if it she didn’t go into labor at the same time. 

Izuna is born as a battle rages around their room. All her children are huddled around her, because the Uchiha believe children should be present for childbirth and they were too small to fight anyway.

Kuro huddles between her leg to catch his newest brother, while Togakushi dabs her sweating forehead. And Madara, the only one she'd thought wouldn't survive, stands at the foot of her bed with an adult’s katana in his eight year old hands.

_(Akane will later learn that Kou died in the battle and that Madara is the new oldest. The news doesn’t rattle her as much as it should have, because she can still see him in her mind’s eye, standing tall. Maybe she got their names wrong after all.)_


End file.
